


In Which Multitudes Are Contained

by merriman



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Possession, truth is stranger than fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 02:08:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8383891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: Is it truly possession if you allow it? If you invite it and foster it and can cast it off at will?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lynndyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/gifts).



> Huge thanks to my beta for encouraging this weird idea and telling me to go for it.
> 
> The reason for the separate character tags for Methos, Death, and Adam, should, hopefully, become apparent in the story itself.

Methos and Joe were drinking. It wasn't an uncommon way to pass the evening, especially with MacLeod out of town and everything quiet in his absence. Methos suspected that Joe tried to actually get him drunk every so often, even though it had never really worked. Still, it made for a good excuse to tell some outlandish stories. Some of them were even true.

"You know I can control how other Immortals sense me?" Methos asked Joe one night. It was raining buckets out, the trees stripped bare of their fall leaves. The only customers in the bar were some hardy souls who'd taken refuge from the storm and were keeping to themselves in the corners. Methos had a seat at the bar itself, Joe seated beside him. It wasn't like they were busy enough to need him running around.

Joe gave him a sidelong glance, then laughed. "You, my friend, are full of it."

Methos shook his head. "I swear I'm not. I can't hide it, of course. None of us can. Or at least no one I've ever met. Though come to think of it, if they were hiding it, how would I know? Anyhow, I can't go that far. But I can… tweak it. Just a bit."

"Oh yeah?" Joe swiveled his stool around to face Methos. "And just how does that work, oh wise and ancient one?"

"It just does," Methos told him. "I can make it a little more… disconcerting. It's helpful when there's someone I want to dissuade from coming after me."

Joe just frowned and sipped his whiskey. "Sure. Wouldn't it also draw in hunters?"

"That is the down side, yes," Methos admitted. "Which is why I don't do it that often."

"Of course it is," Joe said, getting up off his stool as the doors blew open and a couple of people came in, soaked to the bone and already asking if there was any chance of coffee or something else warm.

Methos sat at the end of the bar and watched him, wondering just how much he could tell Joe before it was too much. Sometimes mortals just couldn't grasp the wilder things in the world. Even Joe had his limits. He might not believe any of it at all, were Methos to choose to tell him.

* * *

He'd been young, though in Methos' memory, young was a relative sort of concept that spanned from the first head he'd taken to a few hundred years later. But still, he'd been young. And when Methos had been young, there had already been others, Immortals older than him. And they had preyed on the young. Teachers were few and far between. You didn't take on a student who might well surpass you and take your head one day. Maybe he'd had a teacher at some point, but whoever it might have been, Methos couldn't remember them. What he did remember was fighting and winning and lightning and the sudden realization that he had someone else's essence in his mind. It was easy enough to tamp it down, pack it away, let it simmer in the back of his soul for a while. Then it happened again. And again. And again. All those people, mingling and waiting until one day Methos found himself in need. 

Sometimes you simply need to be someone else for a while. Sometimes it's a matter of survival. So when a man with a scar and a deep well of anger that burned like a cask of oil came to him and didn't draw his sword, Methos knew he wouldn't make it. He wouldn't be able to walk beside this man and if he couldn't walk beside him he would lose his head. Simple as that. So he went looking, deep inside, and found that there was a whole host of people waiting for another crack at the world. Choosing one wasn't hard. He simply let them fight for control and there he was. A man who had lost to Methos by sheer bad luck. He was angry too, but cold and distant and Methos drew him on like a cloak, wearing him for so long that it almost felt like his own skin. Peeling him off was hard. Packing him away was harder. Being bare in the world, only himself with no shelter from someone older and wiser, that was the worst.

So of course he'd found another. And another. And another. If he was careful enough about it he could find not just those whose heads he'd taken, but some they'd taken just prior. All those ghosts, they just wanted a little more time. When Methos finally heard the term "possession" he didn't really care if it applied. After all, it wasn't as if he had no control over it. He picked who got to come to the fore. He chose who to wear for a decade or so.

Some of them were easier than others. Death was always there, waiting for a chance, but he was so difficult. So dangerous. There was a doctor and a lawyer and a mechanic. Sometimes he'd pull one out and switch just for a little knowledge he hadn't had before. It was always good to have the right manners or even just the right attitude, and Methos had gotten very good at picking just the right soul for the job.

Then there was Adam. Where Death was a cloak made of skin and ash that shielded but didn't warm, Adam was a wool sweater, well worn and comfortable. From what Methos could tell, he'd been a scholar in London at some point and had lost his head to a man who'd challenged Methos himself two days later. Adam came along for the ride and he was the perfect unobtrusive disguise. And along with him had come a mild and unobtrusive quickening. Something that seemed to fool people into thinking Methos was young and inexperienced. It would have been funny, if it hadn't been such a pain in the ass to deal with hunters thinking he was an easy mark.

* * *

"So that's how I do it," Methos explained to Joe. Of course he'd left out the bits about Death and actually _being_ more like someone else and his ponderings on ghosts and hauntings and possession. It wouldn't do to have Joe question if he actually knew _Methos_ , which of course he didn't. Methos didn't know Methos anymore, really. Adam was as close as anyone was going to get these days. But still, the bare bones were there for Joe to consider.

"You pick a quickening?" Joe asked, clearly skeptical of the whole thing. "You just, I dunno, flip through them like an address book and say 'Yup, that's who I'm using today!' and that's what say, Mac, feels?"

Methos shrugged. "Sort of. I try to stick with just one, and the same one most of the time or it would confuse people. Just, every so often I let it all out at once to try and scare people off. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't." And that had been quite the trick to learn, giving voice to the souls he carried without letting them out to play. But he had it on good authority - his own - that it wasn't something pleasant to encounter.

Joe gave him an appraising look and Methos could tell he was measuring up the bullshit level of the whole thing. The funny part was, everything he'd told Joe that night was true. Sure, it wasn't the whole story, but none of it was a lie. 

Maybe in a hundred years or so Methos would track down Joe's recordings of their conversations - he knew there had to be some - and see just what tales Joe had cast aside as total crap, and what he'd decided to give credence to.

Methos finished off his beer and went around the bar to ditch the bottle. He grabbed his coat and sword while he was back there and smiled at Joe. "I'd prove it to you if I could. Ask MacLeod some time. He should have noticed a difference."

Joe waved him off with a nod and a "yeah, yeah, sure" as Methos pulled on his coat and headed for the door. It was still pouring outside and the wind was whipping the rain almost sideways. Methos stepped out into it as a gust slapped his coat against his legs and the sound of the wind in the trees was almost loud enough to drown out the laughter of a thousand souls in his head.


End file.
